AEFW: In-Tank Whoopin

[JPMagyar]

Habib, the maker of the Salifert line spoke specifically about a woman who believed she had a reaction to FWE/levamisole and he said . . .

From Habib at Salifert:

Hi Tom,

I looked at that thread earlier today, saw she wanted to work on the tank again.

It almost sounds like having been stung by something like nematocysts in the tank followed by an allergic reaction?

Or just a timing coincidence?


We sell Flatworm eXit to our master distributor in the USA and they have a MSDS for it.

I copied the tox data from it and pasted it below.

HTH

Habib

Toxicological Data on Ingredients: Anthelmintic: ORAL (LD50s): 4800 mg/kg [Rat]. 2100 mg/kg [Mouse].

Note to physician: The maximum amount of solution per package is approximately 10 ml ( 0.34 fl. oz.) or the equivalent of approximately 10,000 mg.

and

according to the MSDS, . . . Flat Worm Exit is Levamisole hydrochloride. It's a pig dewormer.

So . . . one bottle contains 10 ml (I measured mine and it had 10 ml of solution) which apparently contains 10g of Levamisole. I am assuming that the powder you guys are using is 100% Levamisole so the grams should work out. Most importantly for me I have used FWE before in my tank with no ill effect.

As to those who claim FWE doesn't kill AEFW, allow me to show what one drop in 50 ml of tank water caused in 1 hour. . .

 

[jda]

I totally believe that FEW is levamisole. I totally believe that it will work. I just don't know how much levamisole is in 10ml of FWE solution.

 

[rovster]

Definitely the time of exposure has a lot to do with it. I observed this by catching worms and leaving them in tank water overnight. Unfortunately I don't have any more worms to catch, so I was unable to perform this test on my last dose. But as I mentioned earlier, the worms died in the water with the higher concentration after several hours. That concentration was closer to ormets upper limit but not quite. I used 2.4-2.5ml of potion/gal.

I thought it was pretty well know that FWE is a pretty good means of control of these worms but not a cure. Maybe with the extended exposure it may be. Anyone know of anyone that has used FWE for extended periods. I guess the warnings on it would scare anyone into not even trying that!

 

[JPMagyar]

I totally believe that FEW is levamisole. I totally believe that it will work. I just don't know how much levamisole is in 10ml of FWE solution.

I think that was answered above by Habib. He was giving directions to the doctor and explaining that one bottle has 10ml which is the equivalent of 10,000 mg of Levamisole. It is simply in HCl acid form rather than dry powder form. I will try to get this confirmed from Habib directly via email, but it seems fairly straight forward from the discussion regarding the woman's supposed allergic reaction. The whole reason Habib stepped in was to provide the toxicity information and therefore explain what the maximum exposure to Levamisole was for the woman and clearly he indicated 10,000 mg.

As for my test so far no noticeable changes in the tank inhabitants.

 

[JPMagyar]

Woo hoo! Flatworms are blowing off the affected corals and floating in the water column only to be eaten by my Hoeven's wrasse. So far so good with a dosage of less than 1/2 that recommended by FWE. Must be there are different varieties of these bad boys because I know other folks did not have luck using FWE, but for the variety in my tank this is clearly working.

 

[JPMagyar]

Definitely the time of exposure has a lot to do with it. I observed this by catching worms and leaving them in tank water overnight. Unfortunately I don't have any more worms to catch, so I was unable to perform this test on my last dose. But as I mentioned earlier, the worms died in the water with the higher concentration after several hours. That concentration was closer to ormets upper limit but not quite. I used 2.4-2.5ml of potion/gal.

I thought it was pretty well know that FWE is a pretty good means of control of these worms but not a cure. Maybe with the extended exposure it may be. Anyone know of anyone that has used FWE for extended periods. I guess the warnings on it would scare anyone into not even trying that!

FWE is 100% levamisole which is the same stuff jda is using. It's not 100% clear at the moment that 10ml of acid suspension is equal to 10g of dry powder, but based on the comments from Habib I'm fairly certain it's same. Anyways, we'll see in the coming weeks and months.

I think the new information in this thread is:

1) Leave the medicine in the tank for 24 hours before using carbon.
2) Treat no more than 3 times.

and now I will add that based on work being done on the life cycle in this thread

Acro eating flatworms experiment and study

that we now can try 3 treatments 7 days apart which hopefully will kill any hatchlings that were in egg form on the day of the first treatment. If eggs hatch the day after treatment up to day 7 they are not old enough to reproduce and if they hatch after day 7 the third treatment will kill them before they can reproduce and no eggs should go past 13 days or so goes the hope :beer:


But a HUGE thanks to jda for starting this thread with a carefully maintained log. It really gave me some hope!

 

[rovster]

Maybe I missed it but why not treat more than 3 times. I'm contemplating doing a fourth treatment this weekend. Seems at this point the tank is not affected by the medication.

On a side note, does anyone know how long these things live without food. I see 5-6 weeks being tossed around as a fallow period just wondering if there is any science behind that or just speculation.

 

[acesq]

Joe:

I found the thread where Habib posted the MSDS from Flatworm Exit, but the quote: "according to the MSDS, . . . Flat Worm Exit is Levamisole hydrochloride. It's a pig dewormer." didn't come from him, but from another poster who later in the thread wrote: "I'm now not convinced that FWE is levamisole. It may be something else."

After doing more research, I'm also not convinced that FWE is Levamisole hydrochloride, or if it is, it is present in a significantly lower concentration than we are led to believe.

Habib wrote:

We sell Flatworm eXit to our master distributor in the USA and they have a MSDS for it.

I copied the tox data from it and pasted it below.

HTH

Habib

Toxicological Data on Ingredients: Anthelmintic: ORAL (LD50s): 4800 mg/kg [Rat]. 2100 mg/kg [Mouse].

Note to physician: The maximum amount of solution per package is approximately 10 ml ( 0.34 fl. oz.) or the equivalent of approximately 10,000 mg.

I located an MSDS for Levamisole hydorcloride which states:

Toxicological Data on Ingredients: Levamisole Hydrochloride: ORAL (LD50): Acute: 180 mg/kg [Rat]. 223 mg/kg [Mouse]. http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9924487

Notice the significant difference in the toxicogical data for the two? The levamisole chloride is 26.67 times more toxic than the Flatworm Exit according to an explanation I found on the web for interpreting MSDS :
These values are obtained from toxicity testing using experimental animals and are used to indicate the short-term poisoning potential of a material (the lower the value, the more toxic the material). LD50 (lethal dose 50%) is the amount of a material, given all at once, which causes the death of 50% of a group of test animals.

So what is the active ingredient of FWE?

 

[jda]

Woo hoo! Flatworms are blowing off the affected corals and floating in the water column only to be eaten by my Hoeven's wrasse. So far so good with a dosage of less than 1/2 that recommended by FWE. Must be there are different varieties of these bad boys because I know other folks did not have luck using FWE, but for the variety in my tank this is clearly working.

You have to read treatment posts and threads with soft eyes. Even though everybody can post in the interwebs, the experiences and reefer quality is not the same. There are people who did indeed have success with FWE.

 

[JPMagyar]

Joe:

I found the thread where Habib posted the MSDS from Flatworm Exit, but the quote: "according to the MSDS, . . . Flat Worm Exit is Levamisole hydrochloride. It's a pig dewormer." didn't come from him, but from another poster who later in the thread wrote: "I'm now not convinced that FWE is levamisole. It may be something else."

After doing more research, I'm also not convinced that FWE is Levamisole hydrochloride, or if it is, it is present in a significantly lower concentration than we are led to believe.

Habib wrote:

We sell Flatworm eXit to our master distributor in the USA and they have a MSDS for it.

I copied the tox data from it and pasted it below.

HTH

Habib

Toxicological Data on Ingredients: Anthelmintic: ORAL (LD50s): 4800 mg/kg [Rat]. 2100 mg/kg [Mouse].

Note to physician: The maximum amount of solution per package is approximately 10 ml ( 0.34 fl. oz.) or the equivalent of approximately 10,000 mg.

I located an MSDS for Levamisole hydorcloride which states:

Toxicological Data on Ingredients: Levamisole Hydrochloride: ORAL (LD50): Acute: 180 mg/kg [Rat]. 223 mg/kg [Mouse]. http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9924487

Notice the significant difference in the toxicogical data for the two? The levamisole chloride is 26.67 times more toxic than the Flatworm Exit according to an explanation I found on the web for interpreting MSDS :
These values are obtained from toxicity testing using experimental animals and are used to indicate the short-term poisoning potential of a material (the lower the value, the more toxic the material). LD50 (lethal dose 50%) is the amount of a material, given all at once, which causes the death of 50% of a group of test animals.

So what is the active ingredient of FWE?

You're totally right Aces. I had assumed the MSDS in the link was for FWE but it isn't. After a lot more reading I think FWE is 10g including 8g water, 1.5g Citric Acid, and .5g of Levamisole. That's all speculation on my part, but it's based on the fact that 1) the woman on the WAMAS thread said FWE is Levamisole and I figure she would have had to have gotten the truth from Habib or Marine Depot (who holds a copy of the actual FWE MSDS that outlines the true ingredients or so I am told by my buddy that works there) 2) Habib said somewhere that FWE is 80% water, and 3) the little bit of the actual MSDS Habib shows says Citric Acid.

More importantly though I ordered the Levamisole powder from Ebay, so hopefully next week I can do the JDA protocol for my second treatment. I did a water change and put GFO and GAC back online last night, but sadly I found one living flatworm this morning so clearly the low dose I did killed some, but not all. Fortunately turkey basting is fairly effective at keeping individual corals free from predators at least for the short period of time until I get the powder.

Thanks for the help guys!

 

[jda]

Maybe I missed it but why not treat more than 3 times. I'm contemplating doing a fourth treatment this weekend. Seems at this point the tank is not affected by the medication.

On a side note, does anyone know how long these things live without food. I see 5-6 weeks being tossed around as a fallow period just wondering if there is any science behind that or just speculation.

I did 4. Might as well if you have the stuff and have the routine down.

There are some notes in the AEFW science thread that might be able to help:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2346292

 

[rovster]

I did 4. Might as well if you have the stuff and have the routine down.

There are some notes in the AEFW science thread that might be able to help:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2346292

Sold! Will do the fourth treatment after all. Was going to do it anyway, but my thoughts were the same. Seems like it doesn't hurt anything at this point, and its realatively easy to do. Just squirt some potion in there and do a water change the next day. Was going to do that anyway as I do weekly waterchanges. Sweet, I'll report back, but I doubt I'll have anything to report:wave:

 

[rovster]

Dropped the fourth bomb a few hours ago. No worms after basting. Fish eating normal. Upped the dose to 67mL of potion, which puts me over the 2.5mL/gal high dose.

 

[jda]

Anything to report from the 4th dose? See any worms before the dose? ...or since?

 

[rovster]

Sorry, no worms at all. Everything made it fine. The day after my fourth treatment I dipped all my acros in Bayer and transferred to my new display. No losses. I inspected all the dips carefully as I mixed a fresh batch for each group of corals. I did not see any eggs, but I have never seen eggs. My heart sunk when I thought I saw some worms in the dip but turns out they were chiton shells (round and translucent).

There was maybe 1-2 questionable things in the dips, but nothing that I could say was a definite flatworm. My display went fallow for about 6 weeks.

Time will tell. Some of the corals look a little ragged and have what appear to be some quiestionable areas, but it could also be from stress and handling and the skin is still healing. Its only been 2 weeks.

Here are some pics from yesterday that look questionable.....

This coral was looking ragged. Those little circles are suspicious to say the least. The most concerning is the chain of circles in the upper right of the pic. Funny think is that this coral showed no signs of worms in my temp tank. The color on it has improved dramatically in the last 2 weeks but still looks like garbage....



Another Iffy one....Seems to not get better nor worse. May still need more time...


This one had worms and is improving dramatically. Weird growth tips are where I snipped off some dead areas. They have all healed and encrusted over in 2 weeks...


This one was INFESTED with worms. It continues to improve and looks better every few days it seems....


This one was confirmed with worms. Lots of little circles still. Color is improving and polyp extension is improving dramatically on this one. This one still looks highly suspicious...


This last one was INFESTED and I had to treat it with bayer before I even did the Levi treatment. This one has really turned around....



These are some of the pieces I was certain had worms because I would baste them and worms would fly off. Like I said, they look suspicious still, but not sure if that is healing, stress, whatever. I will monitor closely. I will assume for the moment that they are clean, but obviously can't be sure. The tricolor is the most worrisome if I'm being honest about it. That said, that one took the transition the worst and has made a lot of improvement recently.

 

[rovster]

Now that I've aired my dirty laundry. Anyone have any idea how long it would take a bite mark to heal? Are we talking days, weeks, months (I assume not months....). If I'm still seeing circles in a few months, my guess is that would be bad

 

[jda]

Within a month, the corals looked like they never had worms in the first place. Most of the damage was on the underside.

 

[rovster]

If you look closely they are littered with pock marks. The deep water bleached badly but I think it was related to 2 tank transfers and all the dips and treatments within the span of a month. If it takes a month, then I feel more at ease. All the corals with the exception of one have shown a marked improvement and color is definitely getting better.

 

[xtlosx]

If you look closely they are littered with pock marks. The deep water bleached badly but I think it was related to 2 tank transfers and all the dips and treatments within the span of a month. If it takes a month, then I feel more at ease. All the corals with the exception of one have shown a marked improvement and color is definitely getting better.

The first picture you posted with questionable circles, looks like new nub growth. I have that whenever I see new branching growth on its way. Congrats on your progress..

 

[ormet]

Bad news for me, AEFW not defeated. Saw bite marks on A. Granulosa and dipped in Fauna Marin Ultra Pest Control. Lots of smaller AEFW, all the same size, came off. So it seems one clutch of eggs hatched after my last dose Lev.